Читать книгу In Defense of Nothing - Peter Gizzi - Страница 22

HARD AS ASH

On September 20, 1938, Miss Newcombe, 22, combusted before a roomful of people while waltzing in a dance hall in Chelmsford, England. Blue flames erupted from her body and in a matter of minutes she was reduced to a small pile of ash.

Some trees cannot grow without fire.

Private catastrophes at the speed of Phaethon.

What was X? Without faith an integer of light broke

into cities of geometry. Define Y.

In the desert it is all calculus. In an overcoat

in winter, without socks I wandered into night.

One by one all the bars fell into place.

The day of the talking stones is

no longer. The dreams of metamorphosis.

The morning you woke up and for a moment forgot

to call them “dead,” it was the morning

of the poem. The subject is the content into

which I step lovingly. This lapidary effect

of all sons sets where houses invest

the notions of “home” or “hearth” and heat

gives even as the earth rolls over

into night and is contained or content

to remain itself while still breaking

into flower or streets with cadences of wind.

Your musics insist to inform me by

remaining plastic. With you I will revise

the entire possibility of twilight.

The day is woven into images we adhere to

only memory of light against

a screen door ajar. Then children’s

faces appear. A thematic see-saw,

silhouetted now—romantic and real.

How can we say in this hour, who

will resolve the interplay of your countenance,

this ellipsis, the way you come

to me pictorially, in time, with space

that is real. Though someone will die

and I’ll have to wear a tie, again.

This is only a poem to say I love you.

I love you too. I’ve been so happy.

Happy! These sun notes bend the porpoise

in my eye, quiet the pony inside. You know,

when the creek meets the little paper hats

floating out to sea. The cabby goes past

your stop but the bar on the corner

wears a preternatural smile, is more

companionable than what you call home.

So you discover hospitality in tight pants

where the traffic goes both ways.

Has anyone asked you lately

are you all right in your new homes

and does your electric bill depress you

when they cut your powwow?

I was going to build you a flower.

Then the day broke apart. Big leaves

halved and greasy as a waxy stem revealed

a voice I misplaced when I was a girl.

It was summer and we were there

and so was the phonograph

and the missing relatives drowned

earlier in the century during the great migration

of sentences when words were collected

with a winnowing fan. You should have seen it.

I did. Then it was another day arrived

unlike the stubble that had grown up

before, clear and wide with a glint

around all the small names

belonging to the places they are keeping.

When objects become the subject, a veritable

picnic of description that spells glee on the new

horizon. Time is our only subject

and the mutability of forms. Time compact

and out of sight. I want the whole essay.

Collocated with clouds and silver.

Still, sky makes its cinematic sweep over

this burg and to think we get to have coffee

together now and then is pretty terrific

don’t you think? I have come to tell

of the discrepancies of light, material

or otherwise. It makes no difference as the meal

went to waste outside on the knoll where

the neighborhood is tucked into the nights.

Rest safely my beloved for I am coming.

I was going about my business, the way I do

and then from nowhere came a fable

to my doorstep and would not let me alone.

Not now. Not ever. This neon winked its

marquee on my forehead and it flashed—true

and good. Not just any good, but good

as in a farmer’s prayer about earth

and work and rest. O mommy is it true?

Do these beans grow to the sky?

It is the alphabet lies close to ground.

Broken tile to marvel at and so much emotion

goes into learning to make these letters.

A spell against time. Chumming for clarity

and a pronoun to share. Though twenty-six

sounds are not enough. But what the news

didn’t say is she loves her darling Comacho

the darling way he attends her every sob

and whimper. And do not mistake this freedom

for a swagger. My heart was shorn

long before speech and the act itself

overbounds my physical bluster, here

in a body, where an axe splits the wind

from my mouth. This trill at the edge.

Look kids here’s the tempo. So pick it up.

The name of this song is new feeling, because

that’s what it’s about. No monk on a stoop.

I am here. Ask me now.

Saying leave me alone, I am only a poem,

what do you want from me? What do you want

from me teeth? To incise earth? No rest to pillow

my weird. O clack of breeze. I am not abated.

When is a child’s bottom lip enough to say—quit it?

This thought bit me the other day. As all

my pictures have fallen but that don’t make ’em

go away. Meanwhile there is not an index

or CliffsNote for you, wanting to walk

blankly off into a grove where all punctuation

lists, like you, brilliant in its particularity

and distinction. The grass outside is waving

and alive with protein disguised in so many

colors and shapes that form itself is

the only envelope I await. “God

bless Captain Vere!” Now winnow me

under harbor lights. Who sleeps in the now

of flowers my bed of prince? I capsize into the birth

mark on my thigh. I am marked and can

never be yours, but this allows me to be

eternally deferential. I dream of pulleys

in the sun all day and no water will cleanse

the little stain I wear about my smile.

For shame is my hidden lever to fulcrum

the earth. “How’s your gear

Squeak? All in order?” O leaf out my window.

O sky where the tape is blank

and loops. I am sad and strange

in the late morning, in the early afternoon,

in the middle of the night. Yes moon!

My hands shake. Where the distance

of my life is my arm’s length. No place

to live I’ve been told. No place, I’ve been

told, and still you want to throw me outta

my tent. Having lived among factories

and highways in the nuclear age,

I have learned to pronounce “love”

and to recognize my name written on trees

on rocks in the sky above. Yep, that corn’s

straight off the cob, mister. Then it said “I love

Dolores” in white paint against iron

on the rusted trestle. On my way to the heart

of American radio or summer. I was

going to see my friend the human. Do you

understand? When lips kiss and make

a seal, this is the first hermetic doctrine.

I wanna hold your hand. Is there something

I can do now? When the cello bow abrades

my breast will I dissolve finely into air?

Do I have to die for you then to hear these lines

that I make profligate and plaintive for you.

They are parallel lines whose origin is

irretrievable. Each one tells a history.

I remember streets houses trees overhead.

Someone called my name, my dogtag

whistles over here; over there as an adult

I want to thank my family for how I feel

this morning, living under a bridge

scaring children. An unforgivable geometry

insists its repertoire on our dialogue.

Learning to say “my wife my car my color.”

I have seen your thin purpose all my life.

So what is an anthem, and growing up there

is a lesson in it. When all forms have been

emptied can I begin? I doubly derive my body.

Running ahead of myself, beyond memory’s reach,

the source sprang incarnadine. Teeming

with information. Trembling my standard returned.

I knew then this body was not invincible.

Who shall know this posture, this morning’s slide rule.

I needs. I wants. A vista to combat the way

shadow splits and divides on either side

of a pelvic blade. Unity in strict notation.

Dear ghost. Dear reader. I have seen you.

And this at least is one definition, I include,

to become, who I call, myself. A remembrance

got on autumn footpath scurrying on our way

to life. So now when I line up and belong

to persons next to me, I’ll be good

and eat my soup. But I’m sick.

It’s getting harder to say now, this

exploded present, doubling back moebius

style on your gaze and the air thick

thick with tongues. You’ll say it’s too discursive.

But I have learned more from chicken soup

than all the bright contests. So praise

the retarded man serving me coffee

at the meeting, he has a place. Bless him.

And you think I’m kidding.

What did you do today for someone? Or rather

what have I done to sit here. Call me Dismal.

I wake up a thousand times a day. And ask

three questions. Are you shy are you lost

are you blue? Is there nothing left for you?

Only on holiday or for one holiday only?

From boneyard to schoolyard. All the good

it does you now. Waiting in a parking lot.

O pioneer your keel has run aground,

your stars have betrayed you.

There is no instruction for this light,

no room bigger than a lung. Who can say

in common speech what the crowds were cheering for.

Rushing in at the edges of the map

lamenting the end of the forest. Open the theater,

place the ring inside. A curtain of birds

and fish. A curtain of trees and hills

and vistas. Now bring about words to heal.

Sentences to bring about change. Grammar

that shall inhibit evil? Now: clap hands.

Father tell me what you think

of me. Is it a face or a factory? Come here

to distinguish the burden of a smile. Attached

to lightning. As the world was revealed then returned

to your sandwich. I am who sent me.

Obvious and otherwise a trope was. This laundry

line strung from year to year reaches

to the woman I am becoming. Always leads to my fear.

The difficulties of ambiguity. Or your smile

chosen. A vehicle that allows no passage beyond,

but the surface is bright. You’re wrong about clarity,

blue inescapable blue. Not a red sky at night.

What delight can I afford? Though

this might be leading nowhere. This is

a composite map leading me to the horizon

of afternoon, where the you is not erased

or blown away but remains coal ash intact

at the bottom of my mouth. A music

to enhance our margin plotting to broaden

this plain. My field of reference larger than.

To unfold stillness, and giving time time,

I learned to trust the history of my own backyard.

To this day I don’t read newspapers.

After all the sun we had. At twilight a salamander

will appear in the core of the reactor.

The day I gave my wedding dress away.